I was very excited to get this month’s issue of Bicycling magazine. It was a great assignment to go up to the beautiful Horsetooth reservoir in Fort Collins, CO and photograph cyclist, Nick Frey, who makes these badass bamboo bicycles. Be sure to check them out at Boo Bikes, I really want the touring bike personally.

Bicycling Magazine

Anyways, so this month’s issue features 4 images of mine including, one in the table of contents, and a two page spread to lead off the story. Big thanks to Stacey, the photo director at Bicycling, for the fun assignment, and thanks to Nick for being great to work with. Due to a mix up about the direction of the story I photographed Nick before this with one of his bamboo mountain bikes, and we made some great images then as well. I’ll be posting those with some behind the scenes lighting set ups and info as well. So keep an eye out for those as well sometime soon.

All the published images where shot with natural light, so no complicated details there. To check out some more images from the shoot and some lighting set ups, click to see

Nick Looking out into the Road to check if the coast is clear.

Same guardrail shot as published, but later at night with an Alien Bee 1600 at about 1/4 power straight in front of him. Canon 5d with 15mm fisheye.

Nick on the side of the road. See set up shot below for lighting details.

I lit this with an Alien Bee 1600 with a large softbox at about 1/4 power, using a vagabond battery pack to power the light, and pocket wizards for the flash. It was actually a somewhat busy scene, but I just framed all the background clutter out of the way.

Nick on the side of the road with the beautiful horsetooth reservoir behind him. Lighting info below

Same as before AB 1600 with a large softbox, at about 1/8 power. Triggered with PW's and powered by the vagabond.

Part of the story concept was to focus on aerodynamics, so I wanted to shoot this side lit shot of him riding up the road. I lit it with an AB 1600 camera right, with a large softbox, and on the other side of the road was a Canon 580ex flash zoomed to about 70mm aimed at him. Both were triggered with PW's. Funny thing about this is we tried with him riding up the road, but it was way to difficult to focus with how dark it was. So he is just using his foot to hold himself up, and making it look like he is on the pedals.

And finally a self portrait while I was packing up to close out the night.

Outstanding work Sam. I have actually taken a picture of the guardrail shot in Bicylcing with my phone and saved it for inspiration… then I came across you blog and I had to comment. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for writing, and I am glad you like the picture. Working with Nick was a breeze, we are actually going to try and meet up soon to shoot some new stuff in the next few weeks. So maybe, I’ll have a few new shots of Nick soon.